KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaica Prime Minister the Honourable Bruce Golding has stressed that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) needs now more than ever its sense and strength of Community to confront the current global challenges.
The Prime Minister, in delivering the keynote address at Friday’s Opening Ceremony of the 12th Meeting of CARICOM’s Council for Foreign and Community relations (COFCOR), said that “together we can prevail and must prevail” as the Community combated the current global financial and economic crisis.
Honourable Bruce Golding
One of four speakers at the Ceremony at the Hilton Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, Mr Golding, in an address peppered with references to the need for CARICOM unity, warned the Foreign Ministers that the Community was challenged to command attention in today’s world given the pervasiveness of the effects of the global crisis. He pointed out that there was an “invisible tendency” towards protectionism as all countries sought to protect their own interests.
He alluded to the situation arising out of the need for the United States and the United Kingdom to maximise their tax revenues which in turn coloured their view of off-shore financial centres and their role in taxation.
The Prime Minister argued that when the world emerged from its present crisis it would be a different place in many ways and that CARICOM must be prepared to adjust in order to fit in to that new world order. He said the character and structure of CARICOM was changing from its beginning and cited the accession of Haiti and Suriname to the Community and the application by the Dominican Republic to join as evidence of that change. He said such an alteration would naturally influence the scope and aspirations of the Community.
Among the challenges listed by the Prime Minister he singled out climate change and called for a clear and definitive position to be ironed out by the Community in time for the Conference of the Parties (COP-15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, Denmark at the end of the year.
Prime Minister Golding welcomed the new spirit of hemispheric co-operation which emerged from the recent Fifth Summit of the Americas held in Trinidad and Tobago. With respect to Cuba, the Prime Minister said there was a window of opportunity to end the isolation of that country. He said the process must be handled and managed properly and that “reckless rhetoric” and “grandstanding” must be eschewed.
“The interests of the people of Cuba must be paramount in this exercise,” he added. Also speaking at the Opening Ceremony of the two-day meeting, were the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Antigua and Barbuda, the Honourable Baldwin Spencer; the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Jamaica, the Honourable Dr. Kenneth Baugh and the Secretary-General of CARICOM, His Excellency Edwin Carrington.
